Rigging the debate

One of the explanations for the unseemly rush to get the Waxman-Markey Bill through Congress is that the warmists are on the back foot. The global warming tide is shifting against them and, before too long, their creed will be consigned to the dustbin of history as yet another of those mad obsessions that periodically grip the masses.

This is certainly the view of the Wall Street Journal which notes with approval how the Australian Senate is giving Kevin Rudd's version of a climate change law a very hard time. Furthermore, it observes, Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public scepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

The response of the warmists, however, is nothing if not predictable. Having controlled the agenda for so long, their reaction to the changing tide is to rig the debate, closing down on dissenting voices and suppressing alternative views.

One element of this strategy is recorded by Booker in today's column, where he describes the concerted efforts of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) to prevent one of the world's leading experts on polar bears attending a meeting because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

The group is meeting in Copenhagen under the aegis of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission, set up – as Booker puts it- "to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming," one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December.

The excluded expert is Dr Mitchell Taylor who has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. His problem is that, more than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

To add to his litany of sins, while Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years, he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

Thus Dr Taylor has been told that his views running "counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful". His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – are "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG".

This is but one example of how the warmists control the agenda, another being offered by Watts up with that, which catalogues measures taken by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to suppress dissident voices within its own organisation.

None of this could happen, of course, without the active participation of the media and, in his second piece, Booker refers to Lord Hunt, who last week "made one of the most absurd claims that can ever have been uttered by a British minister."

Solemnly reported by the media, Booker writes, he said that by 2020 he hopes to see thousands more wind turbines round Britain's coasts, capable of producing "25 gigawatts (GW)" of electricity, enough to meet "more than a quarter of the UK's electricity needs".

Hunt's ideas are so patently absurd that, had a minister announced that the UK was about to launch a series of manned space shots to the moon to mine green cheese in order to solve the global protein shortage, there would be little to compare between the two.

Booker notes though that perhaps the most disturbing point is that the media dutifully reported Lord Hunt's absurd claims without asking any of the elementary questions that could have revealed that he was talking utter nonsense. One cannot of course expect Opposition MPs to take an intelligent interest in such matters, he writes, but if journalists allow ministers to get away with talking such tosh, the slide into unreality can only continue.

This is a broader point that deserves more attention, touching on an effect we see in defence and elsewhere. The media – as a collective – has its own narratives and as long as an utterance fits with those narratives, it is given an airing. That which goes against the grain is buried.

Currently, the media narrative on climate change is that global warming is real and represents a major threat to the planet and humankind. Similarly, all the woes in the military stem from "under-resourcing" and all problems in Afghanistan will be solved by more "boots on the ground". Thus is the debate rigged, through which means our decline into obscurity, poverty and impotence is managed.

COMMENT THREAD

That road to starvation

Earlier this month we were reporting on the coming grain harvest, observing that while overall production was down, there was at least a bright spot with wheat.

That happy situation arose, in part, because of a bigger than expected yield from India which for the past two years has been prohibiting wheat exports to stave of shortages at home.

However, only a few later the prospects are no longer looking so rosy. The Indian Met Office is predicting that the 2009 monsoon may fail, delivering only 93 percent of the normal 19 inches of rain which falls during the season.

More worryingly, the grain bank of the country - north-west India, including Punjab and Haryana – is predicted to suffer the most, getting only 81 percent of the long-term average for the region. Add a possible error of eight percent and the rainfall for north-west India could be as low as 73 percent of normal, leading to drought conditions.

Most Indian farmers depend on the monsoon as only 40 percent of farmland is irrigated. They tend, therefore, to plant summer-sown crops such as wheat, rice, soybeans and sugarcane in the monsoon months of June and July.

Demonstrating how slender a thread on which we all rely, this current forecast is a significant "correction" from the mid-April statement when "near normal" rainfall was expected. At least this is an improvement on 2004 though, when drought conditions were last experienced. Then the Met Office missed the signals early enough to put out a warning.

Currently, up to yesterday, the country had received only 53 percent of normal rainfall, with central India getting only 25 percent. The government is shying away from declaring an emergency but the situation is undoubtedly of concern.

The Times of India notes that nearly 70 per cent of Indians depend on agriculture, which represents around 17 percent of India's GDP. It has averaged nearly 4 percent growth over five years. The sector was expected to buoy India's overall growth, hit by the global crisis so a fall in farm production could not happen at a worse time.

With food prices are already high, they could hit the roof if the rains do not come, while food security could become an even more pressing issue.

And then, just to add to the well of human happiness, scientists in Canada and around the world are racing to find a way to stop a destructive fungus that threatens to wipe out 80 percent of the world's wheat crop.

Officials say that the airborne fungus, known as Ug99, has so far proved unstoppable, making its way out of eastern Africa and into the Middle East and Central Asia. It is now threatening areas that account for more than one-third of the world's wheat production and scientists in North America say it's only a matter of time before the pest hits the breadbasket regions of North America, Russia and China.

Global warming, under the circumstances, is the least of our problems.

COMMENT THREAD

Playing politics

Edward Leigh – he of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) – is at it again, his committee this time reporting on the ill-starred Type 45 Destroyers.

This warship type, as readers will know, is to form the backbone of the Royal Navy's air defence capability, replacing the ageing Type 42s. To that effect, the ships are fitted with the French manufactured Aster missile, known by the acronym PAAMS (Principle Anti-Aircraft Missile System).

Leigh's main beef is that, although the first (of six) Type 45 will enter service in 2009, "it is a disgrace that it will do so without a PAAMS missile having been fired from the ship, and will not achieve full operational capability until 2011." He (or his committee) also complains that other equipments and capabilities which will enhance the ship's ability to conduct anti-air warfare operations will not be fitted until after the ship enters service in some cases.

As to the committee's diagnosis of the main problem, it notes that, although the Type 45 was based on 80 percent new technology, the MoD failed to take sufficient account of this in its assessment of technical risk or in the commercial construct that it agreed. Thus, it decides that the Ministry "needs to improve its understanding of technical risks at the start of its projects" and should "factor in more realistic allowance for risk on its more technically complex projects."

To say that this is a somewhat superficial finding is something of an understatement. What the committee does not identify is that PAAMS is another of those ghastly European co-operative ventures, with the French having the design lead on the Aster missile. The delays in the deployment of the weapons system, therefore, owe as much to our French partners as they do the MoD.

Further, as we rehearsed nearly four years ago, the genesis of the Type 45 goes back to 1985, with the ill-fated NFR-90 (NATO Frigate Replacement for 90s) programme, a multi-national attempt at designing a common frigate for several Nato nations, including France, Germany, Italy, the UK, the United States and Canada.

Inevitably, with such an ambitious project and with such disparate requirements, the project could not succeed and it was abandoned in the early 1990s, after US and the UK had withdrawn, the latter in 1989 after fears that the design would not meet the requirements for replacing the Type 42 air-defence destroyers.

It was then in 1992, on John Major's watch, when he was imbued with the desire to be "at the heart of Europe" that his Conservative government opted for a "European" solution, setting up the Horizon "Common New Generation Frigate" project with France and Italy.

The project comprised two separate but linked projects – the basic platform (ship), and the missile/radar complex. And while the platform was a common venture, and the British elected for their own radar, the missile system – known as the PAAMS (Principal Anti-Aircraft Missiles system) – was to be French-built by EUROPAAMS.

It was a Labour government then in 1999 that abandoned the Horizon project, the MoD then electing to go for a British-built platform, which had been the original intention back in 1985 before a Nato solution had been considered. A year later, a "fixed price" contract was awarded to BAE Systems for twelve ships, scheduled to enter service by the end of 2014.

Interestingly, the entire programme was budgeted at about £6 billion, including PAAMS, the development of which had been agreed in 1995 by a Conservative government, despite fears over escalating costs. The target cost per ship (excluding missiles) was about £270 million, with as much again for the missiles.

The PAC now observes that it is "disappointing" that the MoD has taken so long - over 20 years, it says - to deliver its replacement for the Type 42s. But it then refers to the Type 45 entering service over two years late and £1.5 billion over budget. In fact, it is 20 years late, and more than £6 billion over the originally planned budget.

The crucial issue though is that this is another of those "legacy" procurement projects started in the days when European co-operation was all the rage, and many of the problems currently experienced stem from that – making the Conservatives jointly responsible for the cost over-runs and delays.

It jars, therefore, to find Liam Fox - as always – scoring party political points on this project, claiming that: "This report highlights the extraordinary risk that this Government is taking with our nation's defences in an increasingly volatile world."

"Its appalling incompetence," he adds, "has left the Royal Navy having to "juggle and hope" with only half the new ships it was supposed to have, and a fleet of exhausted Type 42s that are more than three decades old."

But for the Euro-enthusiasm of the previous Conservative government, the Type 42 replacements would already have been in service for some years. And, instead of relying on the European fixation with developing highly sophisticated technical projects like missile systems from scratch, we would possibly have relied – as do the Americans – on evolutionary projects such as an enhanced Sea Dart, developing the technology already in service on the Type 42.

To reduce costs, we could also have shared Spain's philosophy. Put off by the French insistence on a new European combat system, it went for the "proven and ready to go" US sales pitch for its F100 frigate, which features the Aegis system and Standard missiles, the current US maritime anti-aircraft systems.

Spain's IZAR shipbuilders formed industrial bonds with Lockheed Martin, enabling it to build its own platforms while benefiting from state-of-the-art technology, delivering ships with greater capabilities than the Type 45 which included Tomahawk cruise missiles and Harpoon anti-submarine missiles – at around half the cost for each platform.

Arguably, had the previous Conservative government followed this route, the massive cost increases could have been avoided, in which case we would have twelve ships instead of the six now being purchased. Dr Fox, therefore, is playing politics.

COMMENT THREAD

On the brink

At the beginning of last month, the body responsible for tracking global grain production, the International Grains Council (IGC), was comfortably forecasting that increase in global wheat stocks to 171 million tons, bringing them to an eight year high - nine million tons above this year's figure of 162 million tons.

With world wheat consumption for the 2009/10 harvest estimated at 642 million tons and an expected production of 651 million tons, the global food situation looked assured, even if the harvest will be 37 million tonnes below the 2008 record.

However, a mere month later, after a run of bad weather in North America, and prolonged droughts elsewhere in the world, international investors are scenting blood. Even on the current IGC forecasts, this represents a five percent fall in production. Supplies are tight and look to get tighter.

This, though, might be seen as a longer term crisis although, contrasted with the apparent certainty of last month's IGC forecast, one expert was reporting yesterday that "grain markets seem about as clear as mud".

Wheat supplies, currently, are still seen as comfortable, buoyed as they are by expectations of a bumper crop in India and higher than expected forecasts from China, the world's two biggest wheat producers. But the fate of other crops, particularly corn (maize), is already very different.

Here, almost entirely as a result of the late spring and the cool summer, US production is set to fall to 771 down from the peak of three years ago when 788 million tons was produced. Against this, demand driven by biofuel production is soaring, leading to an expected drop in stocks of 21 percent after the 2009/10 harvest period. Significant falls are also expected in other crops, leading to a drop in total grain stocks on the year by about 15 percent.

Another vital crop is soya, where US reserves are likely to fall to a 32-year low, despite rising demand. Here, there is little excess supply to protect against possible crop losses and any hiccup in production in the Northern Hemisphere will be a major problem.

Then there is oilseed rape and adverse weather in the US and Canada is significantly affecting yields, with Canada alone forecasting a drop from 12.6 to 10.2 million tons on the year. Its oat production is expected nearly to halve.

On this basis, although we are not yet faced with a crisis, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation is predicting that food costs will be driven higher by market pressure, exacerbated by the stresses in the energy, financial and currency markets, which makes food commodities "increasingly vulnerable to external shocks."

Moreover, the expert opinion seems to be that current harvest projections are "highly tentative". Given how much the situation has already changed within the space of one month, everything – as always – depends on the weather, which is showing unusual volatility. As a result, global production forecasts for a wide range of crops are being revised monthly and, in many cases, downwards. The soya estimates, for instance, stood at 212.8 million tons a month ago but have now been reduced to 210.9 million tons.

The volatility is especially an issue with with China – the world's biggest wheat producer, which was reporting production problems and a serious winter drought and is even now experiencing extreme weather conditions with less than 60 percent of the wheat harvest in.

Thus do we get Steve Nicholson, a commodity procurement specialist at International Food Products Corp in St Louis. He notes that trend the last several years has been for demand to outstrip global production capacity. He warns that prices will have to stay high to keep farmers planting more to prevent shortages from developing – but that is before even we see weather effects.

Against this obvious fragility of the global food production and supply system, a continuation of the current cooling trend could have catastrophic implications. We are very much on the brink, and only the slightest lurch will send us hurtling over the precipice.

COMMENT THREAD

Fool's paradise

With Watts up with that exulting in the news of recent snowfalls in North Dakota (the first June falls in sixty years), a Daily Telegraph leader yesterday took the Met Office to task for issuing a weather forecast for 2080. How preposterous it is, the leader stormed, to issue a weather forecast for 71 years hence when the Met Office cannot guarantee getting it right 71 hours from now.

This was precisely the issue which Booker raised last week, noting also the downturn in temperatures which undoubtedly are giving rise to the North Dakota snows.

Yet it is not only this locale which is experiencing unusually cold weather. The delightfully named Carole Cloudwalker informs us of "2-4 inches of snow fall in Cody", in (almost) next door Wyoming. Further north, across the border in Alberta and Saskatchewan this weekend there were reports of six inches of snow on the ground while it was still snowing heavily, with an expectation of eight to ten inches.

In South Africa, unusual snow was also reported, with over an inch of snow in the Eastern Free State (pictured – note the caption), making driving conditions hazardous, with temperatures forecast to plummet.

Australia is experiencing good snow conditions for the opening of its ski season. It is also reported that skiing is well underway with resorts in New Zealand starting early. There is snow in Norway and a fresh fall in Austria - and some in India too. Even in Saudi Arabia there was snow, although this has now melted.

And, on the opposite side of the planet from Australia, last week we saw two inches of snow in the Cairngorms after temperatures on the mountain plunged to 0°C. Hail and snow was expected with winds of up to 30mph and temperatures at 3000ft were not expected to rise above 3°C.

All of this is jolly good fun with which to bait the warmists, but there is also a deadly serious side. Just one report from the Mississippi basin tells us that weather related problems have curtailed spring time planting for corn. Growers have reduced yield per acre prospects for the 2009 crop and projected end stocks to use for 2009/10 corn working toward a record low level dating back to 1999.

We see the same effect further north, where cool weather has pushed growth of Western Canada's wheat and barley crop at least 10 days behind schedule. Late-spring frost has hit and continues to strike the Prairie canola (rapeseed). One pocket of western Manitoba dipped to -4°C and some farmers are considering reseeding.

Similar weather effects are being reported in Brazil, which is considering cutting this year's corn output forecast for a third consecutive time as a frost in central southern states damaged crops. A drop of as much as nine million tons against last year is being expected.

What is extremely disturbing is that we are seeing the beginnings of a trend and, in fact, we were reporting similar woes this time last year. At the time, the message was don't panic … yet.

Despite this the global warming industry ploughs on regardless, continuing its ludicrous propaganda, heedless of the political implications of a prolonged cooling cycle.

And if a global shortage of food is a distinct possibility, the really disturbing thing is that the political classes – including our own – are so fixated with their global warming myth that there is no recognition of or planning for the travails that may well come.

That, above all, may well be the greatest political betrayal of them all, when the world starves because our fatuous politicians cannot even being to deal with reality and remain firmly embedded in their own fool's paradise.

COMMENT THREAD

It's snowing all over the world

Ice in the Arctic is often twice as thick as expected, report surprised scientists who returned last week from a major scientific expedition. The scientists - a 20-member contingent from Canada, the U.S., Germany, and Italy - spent one month exploring the North Pole as well as never-before measured regions of the Arctic.

Among their findings: Rather than finding newly formed ice to be two metres thick, "we measured ice thickness up to four metres," stated a spokesperson for the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research of the Helmholtz Association, Germany's largest scientific organisation.

Then we get this from the United States: "Sorry, Al Gore, but Public Cares About the Economy, Not Global Warming".

Gallup Poll Editor Frank Newport says he sees no evidence that Al Gore's campaign against global warming is winning. "It's just not caught on," says Newport. "They have failed." Or, more bluntly: "Any measure that we look at shows Al Gore's losing at the moment. The public is just not that concerned." What the public is worried about: the economy.

He adds: "As Al Gore I think would say, the greatest challenge facing humanity . . . has failed to show up in our data."

On the British front, we get reported by The Daily Mail, "Ed Miliband's global warming law 'could cost £20,000 per family'", with a report stating: "Laws aimed at tackling global warming could cost every family in Britain a staggering £20,000 - double the original forecast."

This follows the Met Office forecast for a "warmer than average summer". It has been cold and wet ever since that report – we even had the central heating on here. And skiinfo.com reports, "It's snowing all over the world", even telling us: "Last week of winter in France, but it's still snowing", with the southern hemisphere ski season starting five weeks early.

Sooner or later, even our loathsome media are going to put two and two together. Then, those idiot politicians who have embraced the global warming scam are going to look even more stupid than they do already. The reckoning may be delayed, but it will come.

COMMENT THREAD

Addendum

I think I ought to clarify a couple of points in my previous posting on Britain, Durban II and other countries.

In the first place, we ought to give credit where it is due. Canada did not simply join other countries in boycotting this farcical hate-fest - she led the way, as we wrote back in January 2008. Apologies to all our Canadian readers who felt their country was under-appreciated.

Secondly, it was unwise of me to rely completely on Charles Johnson's postings, especially about Sweden. Being in a hurry is no excuse for not following up a story. However, one of our readers explained the situation and, gratefully, I am posting his comment directly:

Charles Johnson is wrong, as he so often is when it concerns Sweden. This time, though, one may forgive him. The press release and the statement by our Integration Minister Nyanko Sabuni (liberal) was somewhat misleading. Maybe one could forgive her too.

Apparently there has been a rift within our government wrt to the question of participation in the Durban II meeting. (Not that we would know that from our newspapers or from the bloggers either. However, reading between the lines of her statement and the statements put out by our Dept of Foreign Affairs, it is quite evident that feathers have been ruffled.)

It is true that no Swedish minister will be present, but just as Britain is sending a delegation of top diplomats so is Sweden. Obviously our "tranzient" FM Carl Bildt was keen for Sweden to take part. However, the Liberal party was against it, and since Mr Bildt couldn't attend himself (three party meetings in Prague (the French, Czechs and the Swedes) and then onto Cyprus ... one wonders about those carbon footprints!) in the end he must have agreed on a compromise. Or as he writes on his blog today: "It will be necessary to carefully follow what happens at the follow-up meeting to the Durban conference ... and to keep close contact with the other EU countries regarding how to act. It will be difficult to calibrate our presence."

Anyway, Bildt has probably lost. President Ahmedinjahd just did what every sane person knew he would do, and most western diplomats including the Swedish delegation left the conference hall.

I shall write later on about the fun and games in Geneva. Because I was in the BBC Russian Service studio I actually saw the footage of the delegates walking out. Very entertaining it was, too.

COMMENT THREAD

Where does Britain stand?

Things do seem to be linked with each other. Just as I started reading up on the latest news about Durban II there was a call from the BBC Russian Service. Could I come in and take part in a discussion about the British position? Well, I could certainly take part in a discussion (what else do I do with my life?) but finding out what the British position was might be a little more difficult.

We have written about the first Durban conference and its deranged participants who turned it into an anti-American, anti-Semitic and, generally, anti-Western festival here and here. (The best site on which the whole farce can be followed is UN Watch. At least it would be a farce if it were not so tragic. We are, after all, funding this appalling event.)

After a certain amount of humming and ha-ing, the United States has, it would appear, decided to boycott the Conference, not least because Secretary of State Clinton might not have wanted the sort of abuse that was hurled at her predecessor, Colin Powell, at the original Durban conference.

President Obama's decision may have annoyed the tranzis who, naturally enough, do not like to see their favourite president follow in the footsteps of their least favourite one, but has the support of various members of the House:

Last week a bipartisan group of House members sent a letter to Obama congratulating him for deciding to boycott the meeting, which is scheduled to begin Monday.

"We applaud you for making it clear that the United States will not participate in a conference that undermines freedom of expression and is tainted by an anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic agenda," said the letter signed by seven members of Congress.

Voice of America confirms the non-attendance:

State Department Spokesman Robert Wood says the US will boycott the conference "with regret" because of objectionable language in the meeting's draft declaration. Wood said Saturday that despite some improvements, it seemed clear the declaration will not address U.S. concerns about restrictions on freedom of expression.

Given that the committee organizing the conference was chaired by Libya, freedom of expression is unlikely to have ever been high on the agenda.

I shall write later on what is going on in Geneva at the Durban II conference and it seems to be rather entertaining. In the meantime, let us have a look at Little Green Footballs, which is listing the countries that are boycotting this noxious event.

Here we go: Australia, Sweden (with Canada and Italy having joined Israel and the United States before), Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand. Poland has announced its boycott as well. There may be others but that is plenty.

Wait a minute. There is a country missing. What is Britain's attitude? Clearly, we are not boycotting or Charles Johnson would have noted that fact. Maybe he has simply missed the announcement. After all, even Homer, they tell us, nodded.

No he missed nothing. Not that I would expect him to – I was just trying to let hope win over experience. Britain is ratting on her allies going to the hate-fest Anti-Racism Conference, organized by the committee chaired by Libya at which President Ahmadinejad, for one, is expected to launch his usual anti-Semitic rant and other delegates are expected to applaud or, at least, look neutral. Quite appropriately, that event will take place some time today, the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth.

We are not sending a very high level delegation but not a particularly unimportant one either. It is led by Peter Gooderham, British ambassador to the UN in Geneva. A nicely judged effort of fence-sitting diplomatic compromise. According to the official explanation, the Foreign Office is "watching how things will develop".

The spokesman said Britain wanted the conference "to get a collective will to fight racism now" but was "under no illusions about the scale of this challenge."

"We wouldn't be able to support a process that was skewed against the West or other countries," the spokesman said, adding that Britain had certain "red lines" on the issues involved that it would stick to.

"We have argued for the concluding document to have sufficient (content) on the Holocaust and combatting anti-Semitism... we would find it unacceptable if the process seeks to deny or denigrate the Holocaust".

Ah yes, those red lines. How reassuring to hear that phrase again. Remind me, how did it work out last time?

France, apparently, is also sending a delegation and this, according to The Telegraph, shows a rift in the EU. Bernard Kouchner, who is leading the delegation, has warned that they would leave if the Iranian President starts making racist or anti-Semitic comments. Given the man's track record that seems an absolute certainty.

The Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, has made it clear that it would have been better if the EU member states had stayed together and followed a common line, preferably that of a boycott. One must admit, that Common Foreign Policy is not looking very good at the moment. But when did it? I am afraid, in this case we cannot blame the EU for our own government's pusillanimity.

COMMENT THREAD

While the children play

For a nation at war, with blood and treasure draining into the sands of Helmand, our ignorance of the current military situation in Afghanistan is matched only by the scale of public indifference - and the media's infantile treatment of the campaign.

Thus we see today the heart-warming story of the "lucky British Tommy", replicated ad nauseam in the popular media, who cheated death by 2mm when a bullet penetrated his helmet.

As a story, it has the fingerprints of the MoD "spin" machine all over it, a classic of the genre that represents both the extent and the style of coverage of the Afghan campaign, part of a deliberate media strategy promoted by the MoD.

It is attempting to shore up domestic support for the war, with a succession of "feel-good" stories, while strenuously avoiding any discussion of the strategic situation that might cause us to wonder what we are doing there and whether we are succeeding.

Given that the British media has all but abandoned any serious attempt at reporting the Afghan campaign, it is hardly surprising that it so readily falls in with this vacuous strategy. Thus it is to the Canadian press that we must turn for the latest slender clues as to what is going on. That, in itself, tells you all you need to know.

Even then the Canadian report has to be clothed in a "human interest" framing, although that in itself is revealing. It tells us that British troops in Helmand are largely unaware of the activities of their Canadian allies, fighting 40 miles away in the neighbouring Kandahar province, as indeed are most Canadians ignorant of the British efforts.

The vital pieces of intelligence, however, are buried in the report, from which we learn that the Canadians are about to hand over the largely unpopulated northeastern and southeastern half of Kandahar to a US Army Stryker Brigade, while the British are transferring the largely unpopulated southern half of Helmand to a US Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

That there has been considerable USMC activity in the southern part of Helmand is not news, their activities in Garmsir last year having been charted by us, but the fact that there is to be a formal hand-over of responsibility of part of Helmand to the US most certainly is news. Furthermore, it represents a major change in status – and presumably strategic direction – for British forces, about which we have been told absolutely nothing.

However, we learn from this Canadian report that the Brits and the Canadians have embraced the growing American presence and have adopted nearly identical strategies to try to win Afghans over. They are using provincial reconstruction teams comprised of civilians and soldiers that are "as joined at the hip as an organisation can be," says Col Greville Bibby, the British contingent's deputy commander.

This, we are then told, is part of a security bubble strategy, with Bibby enthusiastically endorsing it, telling the Canadian audience that it "works". It is absolutely fantastic to see, gushes the brave Colonel. "It is all about them doing it. I can tell you that if we pulled out, the locals would be very angry. They are really hungry for this."

One would be slightly more impressed but for Bibby trying to justify the British strategy of sending men out in poorly protected vehicles, as he tells us: "If you've got the enemy within, laying bombs and attacking with small pockets of men, there are not many scenarios in this small zone for armour." The populated terrain in this province (Helmand) was not practical for heavy vehicles, he says.

"Our experience in Northern Ireland is that you can't influence the people from behind 10 inches of armour. You can't do it whizzing past with armour, pushing them off the road," he then adds, apparently entirely unconscious of the fact that it was this dismal line of thought that cost the Army the campaign in Iraq.

If we get the impression that the British Army has learned very little from its experience in Iraq, at least we can be assured that the USMC is using armour in Helmand – and a great deal of air power. Whether that is or will be effective in the longer term is anyone's guess and, as far as this blog goes, it will be a guess – our masters are not rushing to do anything so rash as to keep us informed.

That, therefore, still leaves unexplained the strategic context of the USMC activity in Now Zad. So far, this has been completely unreported by the MoD and ignored by the British media.

One thus further wonders about Bibby. He retails, with other soldiers at Lashkar Gah, his "frustration" with their own (British) journalists for seldom wanting to report on the non-military war. "The British media focus on the kinetic stuff," says Sgt Paul Crawford, a Royal Engineer who has served previously in Iraq and Afghanistan. "They want to film firefights. But the majority of what we do is stability and construction."

As in Canada, we are told, there is a war to be won at home. While hugely supportive of their troops, many Britons remain sceptical about the mission. "My impression is that there is a lack of understanding as to why we are here," Bibby says. "Like so many things political, the media use this to discuss political implications, rather than what is actually happening on the ground."

But hey! The media doesn't do politics any more. And as for "a lack of understanding as to why we are here," that is mainly because the MoD and this current government is so heavily inspired by mushroom management that it dominates its public information strategy.

Thus, when it comes to what is happening on the ground, Bibby can hardly be unaware of the fact that not only is the media absent, so is the MoD. The brave Colonel only has to look at his own organisation's website to discover that. He will see that it is filled with inconsequential "feel good" PR puffs which do everything short of actually telling us what is going on. He should also know that the media is actively discouraged from coherent reporting – not that this presents much of a problem.

Nevertheless, a grown-up media would, by now, be champing at the bit, demanding to know more, and taking on the "spin merchants" in the MoD. But, as long as it can fill up its pages with tat and political soap opera, and our opposition politicians seem equally unconcerned about what is happening, absolutely nothing is going to change.

Thus are we left in a fog of ignorance and an impression that, whatever is happening, the MoD is extremely reluctant to enlighten us. That can only invoke grave suspicions and maximise distrust, purely on the basis that if the MoD is acting as if it had something to hide, then it is a reasonable assumption that it is indeed hiding something.

But, as long as the political children are content to play their own games, the MoD will get away with it, leaving the grown-ups struggling to work out whether the British activities in Afghanistan are as inept as we fear, or whether they are just being run at the normal level of incompetence.

Should the MoD deign to tell us otherwise – and put Bibby out to grass – we are all ears.

COMMENT THREAD

Not good

Ralph Peters in the New York Post lists the major mistakes the Obama Administration has committed since January 21, when he became President (and stepped down from his position as Messiah).

It makes disconcerting reading. Some of it is less serious than the rest. What the Castro brothers (assuming they are both alive) say is not really all that important except for the fact that "maltreatment" of Cuba has been a left-wing cry for many years. Though, oddly enough, not much is said about the maltreatment of Cuban dissidents by the Cuban government and police.

Russia is, indeed, preening again, but it is not clear how much of that is talk. Medvedev has, indeed, announced massive expenditure on rearmament but this is supposed to have been going on for years and not a whole lot has been achieved - the Russian military does not seem to be any better armed than it was before President Prime Minister Putin's time.

On the other hand, effectively telling the Russians that they can do anything they like in the old Soviet sphere is not particularly intelligent. With Georgia once again in turmoil, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton may well find themselves with a serious problem in the Caucasus. With Russia's economy deteriorating and protests in the country mounting, a little war that could ignite nationalist feelings could appear to be just the ticket to the Russian leadership. Of course, little wars have a habit of turning into big ones and recent Russian history ought to be a warning. Let's face it, the Obama Administration is not going to be.

As for our allies, Obama apparently needs them less than Bush did. O treated Britain's prime minister like the deputy Paraguayan veterinary inspector, and he blindsided the leaders of the Czech Republic, Poland, Mexico and Canada on issues ranging from missile defense to trade. But he'd like them to take the Gitmo terrorists off our hands, please.

Well, that's OK. They won't take the Gitmo terrorists, being readier to scream abuse at the Americans than do anything themselves.

Interestingly, that list does not even mention Secretary of State Clinton's appalling speech in the European Parliament that ought to have warned our own eurosceptic Obama supporters but apparently did not.

The Western alliance is in the very best of hands.

COMMENT THREAD

Highway of Heroes

As parades of soldiers returning from operations become part of the everyday fabric of life, we received a moving note drawing attention to a blog which records the spontaneous demonstrations of appreciation in Canada when their war dead are repatriated.

Read more on Defence of the Realm.

Tories v UKIP

Just to prove that what I sounded (for the time being) was the Reveille, not the Last Post, here is an article about the latests brouhaha between UKIP and the Conservatives. Disregarding past experience the Tories have decided to go for what they consider to be their greatest enemy - UKIP.

Tactically, this is about as stupid a thing to do as anyone can think of. Firstly, UKIP is a small party and, therefore, it does not appear to be quite the most appropriate thing for Her Majesty's Opposition to concentrate fire on it. Secondly, the Tories are trying to build up their image as the "real" eurosceptic party. From their point of view, therefore, it appears to make sense to attack the one rival in that field (actually, now there are two with the BNP acquiring a following) but from the point of view of the electorate it seems rather odd that the fire should be reserved for their putative allies rather than their enemy. Thirdly, providing UKIP with badly needed publicity may not be quite what the Tories really want.

As it happens, I do not agree with the boss about Robin Page. I consider the man to be a crashing bore with the political nous of a backward gnat. His whining about his maltreatment at the hands of UKIP leaves me cold as, I suspect from past experience, that he is really miffed because of not being given sufficient respect. Tant pis.

Whoever engineered the Robin Page story may well live to regret it. The net result of it has been more coverage of UKIP in the media, both old and new, than it has had for a long time with Nigel Farage coming out fighting in the Daily Telegraph. I think the boss is wrong - neither UKIP nor Farage are finished any more than they were finished all those other times it was predicted by many.

I had better declare something resembling an interest here. In a way, I am responsible for recruiting Nigel Farage into what was then the Anti-Federalist League and he played some part in my purge from what afterwards became the UK Independence Party. Therefore, I have known about the Farage problem (if I may call it that) and the general UKIP problem for some time - longer than most people who sound off on the subject. And I still think the Tories are making a tactical mistake but there is very little space for them to manoeuvre in.

At present, the Conservative campaign for the European Parliament seems to be, roughly speaking, vote for us or you will get socialism and federalism with the rider that if you vote UKIP then you will also get socialism and federalism because Labour will get more seats. There are so many things wrong with that argument that it is difficult to know where to start.

Let me make a few points. Anyone who argues that MEPs can or that Tory MEPs will alter the EU's development either knows nothing about that organization or does not care about the truth as long as he or she can get in there. Furthermore, federalism is somewhat outdated; it is many years since most of us have realized that the EU is not intending to be a federalist state in the way the USA or Canada are.

In fact it matters very little who gets in to the Toy Parliament but, rightly or wrongly and I think wrongly, the Tories see the forthcoming June election as a trial run for next year's general one. If they do well in the European and local elections then the road to Number 10 will be open, which is the only thing they care about. What they will do when they get there is anybody's guess.

One of the bloggers to pick up the story is Iain Dale, who has a higher opinion of Nigel Farage than the boss does and has interviewed the man for next month's GQ Magazine. He, too, links to the article in the Independent, not precisely the best source for accurate information about politics in general and UKIP in particular, mostly because they have been wrong so often about so many things.

In this article we also have a throw-away comment about Professor Tim Congdon rejoining the Conservative Party. There have been rumours about disagreements between UKIP leadership and Professor Congdon before and the boss duly documented them at the time. It is hard to tell whether the good professor has gone the whole hog and rejoined the Tories as this is the only official claim I have seen of such a development.

When Professor Congdon left the Tories and joined UKIP he did so with flags flying and guns blazing. There was a long article in the Daily Telegraph that listed all the many things he found wrong with the Boy-King and his party. Most, if not all of those things are still there. That may be the reason why there has been so little publicity about the prodigal's return if, indeed, it has happened. Professor Congdon may not like the idea of having to explain why he has now decided to overlook all the problems he thought to be insurmountable two years ago.

Iain Dale also suggests that Malcolm Pearson may well be the next to follow. This is wishful thinking. In the first place, given the Lord Pearson's track record on the European issue from Maastricht onwards, the Tories would not really want him back but, more to the point, he really cares very passionately about it, believing not just that Britain must come out of the EU but that the entire Treaty of Rome should be torn up and we must start again.

In other words, both he and his colleague, Lord Willoughby de Broke are men of principle. That is about as far from the Conservative "eurosceptics" as one can be. I suspect that Nigel Farage will work considerably harder to keep the two peers on board than he would ever have bothered with the tiresome Robin Page, as they are of far greater use to UKIP and as he, though, perhaps, not every Tory, knows there are alternatives for them: the House of Lords still has a section for Cross-Bench, that is independent peers, a very valuable part of the House. Let us hope neither Gordon Brown nor David Cameron (if it be he after the next election) get round to abolishing them.

The real problem the Tories have is that they have become a one-issue party as well. Their issue is "get rid of Gordon Brown". Nothing wrong with that and it will probably win them the next election though one can never be quite certain in a democracy but it is not sufficient for the future as John O'Sullivan, for one, has pointed out.

Why, I keep asking various ToryBoys and Girls, should I vote for you in the European election? Come to think of it, what are you going to do when you have got your snouts in the trough and your leader is in Number 10? Maybe, instead of telling us that a vote for UKIP is a vote for socialism (as, let's face it, a vote for the Tories is a vote for socialism) they should concentrate on answering that question.

COMMENT THREAD

The wages of neglect

One gets exceedingly weary of the hole-in-the-corner way the MoD is "playing" the war in Afghanistan. Its strategy is to keep us largely uninformed as to what is really going on, while devoting its resources to a steady trickle of propaganda which serves to obscure rather than reveal the truth.

It played exactly the same game in Iraq, feeding us with glowing "puffs" about the "derring do" of "Our Boys", and happy little "touchy-feely" pieces about how our caring-sharing troops were engaging with those nice Iraqis and how things were getting better all the time – when the whole campaign was going down the pan.

We saw the propaganda technique in full swing last week when, out of the blue, we get a graphic account of an operation in the Upper Sangin Valley "which has struck severely at the narcotics industry in Helmand".

"Waves of helicopter-borne troops caught the Taliban by surprise," we were told, "in a meticulously planned assault which helps finance the Taliban's insurgency." And then we got the political pay-off from defence secretary John Hutton, who happily twitters:

Our dedicated and professional forces have once again taken the fight to the enemy. Their bravery, coupled with the size and sophistication of our firepower, has cleared the enemy from large areas of Helmand bringing security and governance to more of the province. The seizure of £50 million worth of narcotics will starve the Taliban of crucial funding preventing the proliferation of drugs and terror on the UK's streets.

It is funny how military operations are always "meticulously planned", and no doubt this one was – like all the rest, although one suspects the MoD would not be publicising it otherwise. They leave those to their Boards of Inquiry and then keep schtum about the results.

Putting this operation in perspective, the local value of the Afghani heroin trade is in the order of £3 billion (as export income). By the time the drugs get on the streets at their destinations, they are worth ten times that – and sometimes more. Hutton's £50 million is in fact worth about £5 million as export value in the form of heroin. As crude opium in situ it is probably worth one tenth of that – about £500,000. That is not even chump change compared with the total value of production.

Even then, the figure is meaningless. The "industry" in Afghanistan is vastly over-producing. It is thus keeping back considerable stocks in reserve, to keep the price buoyant. It will simply replace this amount from stock and won't even miss it. That is one of the more sinister activities of the Taleban, they way they are manipulating the market. Thus, the loss of this small quantity of drugs will have no impact on the overall income and cause very little more than a minor, local inconvenience. It will certainly have no effect on the amount of heroin reaching the UK.

Without in any way downplaying what our troops achieved – they put their lives on the line for this operation - this is typical MoD spin. They talk up every "success" while never giving us the overall picture.

We saw them doing exactly the same in Iraq, talking up weapons cache seizures, which were minuscule compared to what was actually in circulation. On the other hand, they kept very quiet about major losses of equipment and wounded soldiers when, for instance, supply convoys got bounced - which was happening very frequently indeed.

The very great danger in hyping this up is that the MoD actually begins to believe its own propaganda, and starts to think it is achieving anything substantive. That again harps back to Iraq, when the Army mounted a huge programme of raids to capture weapons and bomb-making materials. When it paraded the seized material, one definitely got the sense that the MoD believed it was achieving something. But the raids made absolutely no difference to the rate of bombing and attacks.

Yet, when the US Army and Iraqis closed down the bomb-making factories in al Amarah and Maysan province, within a month, combat engineers doing mine clearance noted a sharp fall off in the number of bombs being laid. The MoD was deceiving itself that its activities were having any effect at all.

What we don't get is any sense of a balance sheet – what we are gaining in overall terms, and what it is costing us. For sure, we know that troops are killed – we know that because the MoD is obliged to tell us when a soldier dies, but it does not tell us of the injured.

What little information we get is statistically meaningless, because we can't relate to anything. The most detail we get is in "puffs" about heroic recoveries of British soldiers, who defy all the odds to overcome their injuries. This is in no way to denigrate these admirable people. It is to attack the MoD for the way it exploits their efforts as a tool of propaganda, giving a one-sided view without the bigger picture.

A little of that emerges in The Sunday Times today which publishes an article headed: "MoD hides rising injury toll of Taliban bombs". There, we are told that more than 100 British soldiers have suffered amputations and other debilitating injuries in the past year in Afghanistan, "according to previously suppressed Ministry of Defence (MoD) figures that reveal the true toll of the Taliban's roadside bombing campaign."

The number of troops losing limbs or eyes, suffering serious burns or permanent brain damage has increased dramatically since August 2007 when the Taliban intensified their efforts. During the past 18 months, 37 of the 71 British troops killed are known to have been the victims of roadside bombs or mines, but the number of troops disabled in the attacks has never been fully disclosed.

Figures now obtained by The Sunday Times show that 37 soldiers suffered "life-changing injuries" between April 2006, when they first deployed to southern Afghanistan, and the end of that year. There were 55 such injuries during the whole of 2007. Last year the figures more than doubled to 114 and there have been 12 cases this year.

Yet this is only one glimpse of the downside. We still don't get any details of how these troops were injured, under what circumstances, and whether – of crucial importance – they could be prevented.

One tantalising piece of information is that, while the MoD has bought better armoured vehicles in an attempt to counter the Taliban offensive, insurgents using such large amounts of explosives there is a limit on the protection afforded even by new Mastiff armoured vehicles. There have, we are told, been cases of soldiers in Mastiffs who were protected from a blast but who lost their legs below the knee as a result of the shock wave inside the vehicle.

We also learn that such is the scarcity of helicopters – which would provide a safer mode of transportation - that last week a British operation against the drug barons financing the Taliban had to use aircraft provided by the US marines. That, incidentally, is a detail curiously missing from the MoD "puff" on the operation.

Campaigners, says The Sunday Times claim the MoD is deliberately keeping the human cost of the war out of the public eye. All the MoD will admit is that 23 soldiers underwent amputations between December 2007 and November 2008, but said is was "unable to provide a breakdown of other serious injuries."

If that is what it is saying, that is a barefaced lie. The most comprehensive details of all injuries in theatre are kept, on a single computer database in Selly Oak, with complete details of all incidents. They are instantly accessible and can provide breakdowns of all the details needed.

Since the MoD is so sparse with its information, perforce, the only real way of measuring progress on the battlefield has been the death rate. This detail has traditionally been used by military historians and, of late, it has been the main metric (sometimes the only metric) on which the media rely. It there is a high number of deaths, the media get interested. If there is a period without casualties, the media goes to sleep.

The problem is that even this metric is now becoming heavily distorted. We saw recently a report in The Daily Telegraph on the extraordinary measures taken to airlift a dozen wounded servicemen out of Helmand province "in the largest and most complex medical evacuation since the conflict in Afghanistan began".

From that piece, we also learn that more than 20 troops a week are being evacuated by air from Camp Bastion and that the number of aeromedical evacuations has more than tripled since the first British forces entered Helmand in 2006 with 800 troops flown home in the past year.

Last year, we also saw a piece which reported that British battlefield casualties had been almost halved by radical new changes implemented by medics, bringing down the death rate on the front line in Afghanistan from almost a quarter dying from their wounds to one in eight.

The massive improvement in survival rates has been put down to "miracle bandages", a new tourniquet and the use of trauma consultants on board evacuation helicopters.

Significantly, the use of large Chinook and Merlin helicopters carrying an anaesthetist or emergency medical consultant plus four medics are the key factor. With most journeys in Helmand involving a two-hour round trip, the doctors can effectively set up a trauma station in the back of the helicopter keeping the patient alive until they reach the field hospital in Camp Bastion.

All this is being done for admirable reasons, and it is far too cynical even to suggest that the enormous effort made to prevent troops dying suits the MoD rather well. The fact is though, that with fewer troops being killed – when even quite recently they would have died – the war in Afghanistan is getting far less scrutiny than it might otherwise have done.

With 58 troops having died this year and last, and a ratio one death in eight applying when previously it would have been one in four, we might have seen 132 deaths but for the changes. Those extra 74 deaths would have brought the total from the current 126 to exactly 200.

These are, of course, rough calculations, but the point is made. With there having been 178 deaths in Iraq, a recorded death toll well in excess of that in Afghanistan would have drastically altered the media dynamics. There would have been far more reporting, much more comment, considerably more criticism and a great deal more political intervention.

What has escaped comment from those who have recently reported on the efforts made to keep injured troops alive is the apparently disproportionate effort being expended. From our extremely limited fleet of Merlins and Chinooks, no expense is spared when it comes to using them as flying trauma stations, but that leaves us even shorter of helicopters for operations, so we have to borrow from the Americans or send troops out in less safe forms of transportation.

Not for the first time do we observe that it would be gratifying if the MoD – as well as the media and politicians – devoted as much energy and resources to keeping troops alive and uninjured as they did to treating them and trying to keep them alive after they have been wounded.

That they could do more is indicated by a piece from Thomas Harding last week, in which he records an interview with Canada's defence minister who tells us that British forces in Afghanistan could "learn lessons" on how to properly equip troops on the front line.

This is an issue we have covered many times on this blog, noting how the Canadians are far more advanced in their force protection techniques, using equipment that we are only now thinking of buying, while still having considerable capability gaps.

With the death rate being contained by "artificial" means rather than by improved fighting equipment and tactics, the fear is that these words will fall on deaf ears. It has been difficult enough getting the MoD to focus on force protection and without constant pressure, there is great danger that we will see backsliding and a renewal of the complacency which has blighted the whole campaign.

As important, with the statistics being skewed – even if for the best of reasons – we are no longer getting any measure of what is going on, beyond the propaganda "puffs" from the MoD. Deprived of signals, we can only speculate, with suspicion that it is far worse than is painted and deteriorating rapidly.

Neither this government nor the MoD can be trusted to tell the truth, and nor can the media be relied upon to ferret it out. We can, under these circumstances, only fear the worst. We are now, in many senses, paying the wages of neglect.

I am cross-posting this on Defence of the Realm.

COMMENT THREAD

It woz the greenies wot done it!

Hats off to Capt. Captain Chesley Sullenberger for his brilliant emergency landing on the Hudson. But now that it is all but official that Flight 1459 hit "a wall of birds", since identified as Canada Geese, consider why there should have been so many in such a critical spot.

Well, according to the New York State government:

Canada geese are a valuable natural resource that provide recreation and enjoyment to bird watchers, hunters, and the general public throughout New York State. But in recent years, flocks of local-nesting or "resident" geese have become year-round inhabitants of our parks, waterways, residential areas, and golf courses, and too often, they are causing significant problems.

But we also learn that:

All Canada geese, including resident flocks, are protected by Federal and State laws and regulations. In New York, management responsibility for Canada geese is shared by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). It is illegal to hunt, kill, sell, purchase, or possess migratory birds or their parts (feathers, nests, eggs, etc.) except as permitted by regulations adopted by USFWS and DEC.

Way back in 1991, the New York Times was reporting, "Geese Are Multiplying, Thanks to Protection", noting that, "Several weeks into the breeding season, tens of thousands of newborn goslings have been added to Long Island's geese population."

Eighteen years on, the population has reached plague proportions. And, as the New York Post notes, government data show Canada geese are the biggest avian threat to aircraft. They caused $47.4 million worth of damage to aircraft from 1990 to 2007.

In that period, US pilots had reported 1,109 strikes by Canada geese, including 568 that caused serious damage to aircraft - a damage rate of 51 percent. This is far more damage than is caused by other birds. Bird strikes by all species - estimated at 80,000 over the same period – damaged aircraft just 11 percent of the time.

Needless to say, the greenies continue to squeak. In the interests of aviation safety alone, it is about time we had a cull of the greens.

On the other hand, we could go with Boris Johnson's mad idea for an airport in the Thames estuary, where there are some of the most dense migratory bird routes in Europe - one of the reasons why the original Maplin Sands project was dumped.

It would give a new meaning to that old saw: "Is it a bird? Is it a plane? ..." Er ... it's both! Keerrrashhhh!

COMMENT THREAD

What a waste!

Take one story, add another, mix in yet another. Then add some more information, do some arithmetic, stir well and you have a Booker column.

This is about the craziness of paying to sort and store waste paper instead of treating it as "biomass" and burning it for energy, all the while planning to build new biomass generation plants using wood chips grown specially on prime agricultural land in the UK, and making up the balance by importing more from Canada.

This is yet another example of the madness and inefficiency of our government, which could get more energy from waste paper than 10,000 windmills. However, there is a greater madness. It is still far cheaper to use landfill and recover some energy from burning off the methane – with the added bonus of recovering unusable land.

Readers will be encouraged, though, to learn that our gifted and socially responsible opposition is on the case, adding to our growing confidence that a change of government will put us in new and competent hands.

COMMENT THREAD

Worse than we think

Booker is in an optimistic mood today in his column, declaring that, "2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved."

To support his thesis, he points out that all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare.

He thus tells us that last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world.

As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

However, reading The Times leader yesterday, headed "The war on Carbon", you would think its writer lived on a different planet.

In a litany of warmist orthodoxy, it tells us that, "There will be continued argument about the science of climate change over the next 12 months, but not, except on the conspiratorial fringe, about the threat. Climate change is real and worsening, and there is an overwhelming likelihood that much of it is man-made."

And still we get the same mindless drivel from the warmist tendency in The Daily Telegraph, that darling of the greenies, Louise Gray telling us that, "Daffodills at Christmas and snow in October were just some of the unusual weather patterns noticed by the National Trust in the last year as climate change begins to takes its toll on the British landscape."

Thus, snow in October is "climate change". Nothing of what has so engaged Booker and many more of us has percolated the orthodoxy, which has not shifted one iota from its original position. It goes on regardless.

Nor, from an op-ed by the Great Leader, David Cameron, do we see any retreat from his position. He proudly reminds us of his commitment in an advertisement almost exactly three years ago "to tackling poverty and climate change, our backing for the NHS and our belief in a free enterprise economy."

But, bringing us back down to earth with a bump is a piece in The Times - business section, of course, headed, "Blackout fear as UK power plants face axe."

The story is interesting because it tells us what we suspected and feared – that the effects of the EU's Large Combustion Plant Directive is going to be more damaging than predicted.

The nub is that, when power plant operators made their decisions to opt out of the directive and thus close down a number of coal plants by 2015 rather than pay the exorbitant sums needed to conform with the directive, it was assumed that these plants would only be used for peak generation, working on limited hours.

Because of the recent price distortions in the energy market, however, these plants have been working more or less full time, providing base load electricity and thus becoming worn out faster than anticipated. With major refits being economically unviable, given the limited lives of the plant, many will now have to close down early.

The first of them, Scottish Power's 1.2GW plant at Cockenzie, which generates enough power for 1m homes, will close as early as September 2010 based on current rates of electricity production. The "energy crunch" is thus predicted to hit us by 2013 rather than 2015, as we lose some 7.6GW of electricity – ten percent of the UK's total capacity.

The seriousness of this issue is such that it is this, rather than their fatuous obsession with "climate change", on which our policy-makers should be concentrating, to say nothing of the anticipated shortfalls in crop yields that will come as a result of the extended bad weather.

If we are already seeing global instability, this is nothing compared to the chaos which will ensue as more and more developing countries compete for dwindling food supplies. The world will be in flames, but it won't be because of "global warming".

Unfortunately, therefore, while Booker is undoubtedly right – the miasma of "global warming" having now lost whatever credibility it ever had, the dark shadow of obsession still afflicts our ruling classes and they are not even beginning to budge. I suspect it will take catastrophic failures in our own electricity supply system, and famine on a global scale before reality percolates their dismal brains.

By then, it will be too late, but for the hand wringing. Perhaps we should encourage them to practice that, so they are well-prepared. Anything else, clearly, is too much to ask.

COMMENT THREAD

Make or break!

It ain't snowing here in little ol' England, but, we are told, Canadians cleaning up after a series of snowstorms blasted through the country should hold on to their shovels. Forecasters are predicting some regions will soon be walloped by more winter weather.

Thousands continue to be without electricity in Nova Scotia and travellers across Canada face airport delays while, in British Columbia, residents are bracing for around 4-8 inches of snow, just days after a storm dumped up to 28 inches on the southern coast. Environment Canada has issued storm warnings, or storm watches, for parts of Ontario, with strong winds and 8 inches of snow expected in northern areas of the region.

Many parts of the US are as bad, and it is snowing in Moscow. I guess this will be the make or break year for the warmists, who are being a little quiet about their religion at the moment. It is very hard to be a believer when you taking in that much white stuff.

COMMENT THREAD

Booker – part 2

The column is finally up, with part 2 here - more than twelve hours late, and only after a telephoned reminder. You do really wonder what the website managers think they are doing. Anyhow, you can read it off the link, and enjoy the photograph.

Meanwhile, even the BBC has noticed that it is snowing in North America – and not a word about global warming! Canada is also getting hit and Reuters is reporting on the snow and freezing conditions in China. Greater Kashmir is also having a hard time.

However, never fear, the New Scientist is telling us that the "Arctic melt [is] 20 years ahead of climate models", with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado claiming that the Arctic has reached a "tipping point" - a dramatic and irreversible slide towards ice-free conditions.

The warmists, therefore, can sleep easily in their beds, in the certain knowledge that their religion is safe - while the rest of us freeze.

COMMENT THREAD